Last night I was up until midnight sorting through “stuff” and putting it away.
Some of this stuff comes from accumulating paper, office supplies, boxes, etc for over ten years without taking the time to periodically toss out things that were outdated, no longer useful, and so on.
Some of this stuff comes from buying things online in a knee jerk fashion without first deciding “do I actually need this?”
When I shop online it’s easy to buy stuff. I don’t have to have my credit cards in hand when I buy things from Amazon.com. I just add things to my cart, click “Buy” and it’s done. I used to love 1-Click shopping. I still appreciate it but it makes impulse buying a little too easy for someone like me.
As an example, one retailer sent me an email letting me know that I had $1,900 of unused credit on my credit card. My guess is they want t encourage me to use that credit to buy holiday gifts. My immediate emotional response to the subject headline was the same feeling I get when I’m washing my jeans and find a $20 bill in one of the pocket … like “Wow, I forgot about this! I meant to spend this and i didn’t . Yay! What fun stuff can I buy?” But $1,900 in credit isn’t $1,900 in cash. If I spent that $1,900 and then it took me six months to pay off that debt, I would actually be spending a lot more than $1,900.
Although I opted out of receiving emails from this company, it’s interesting how many emails companies send on the pretext of offering useful information. Something i’m a lot more sensitive to now that I’ve made a conscious decision not to buy online.